Course Syllabus

ART 1001 Summer Snow Workshops (formerly Summer Snow Master Classes)

Course Description

Summer Snow is offered each June as two, one-week intensive workshops. Participants choose from 5-6 courses offered each week, which are taught by professionals working in a wide range of mediums. Each unique workshop curriculum is designed by the artist invited to teach in their discipline of expertise. Courses are designed for participants with skill levels from novice through professional. Each participant will create work based on their individual artistic performance, skill level, and studio discipline. A collective gallery exhibition and a daily lecture series by all Summer Snow instructors provides insight into process, studio practice, and philosophy of each artist participating each week. This course is repeatable for credit.

Justification

Summer Snow workshop participants spend many hours in preparation, practice, attending classes, viewing demonstrations, and working on individual studio projects during workshop sessions and in the evenings. Participants may use earned credit toward Snow College graduation or transfer this credit as an art elective to any higher education institution. Many public educators utilize earned credit towards license renewal. In addition to a dynamic community outreach and recruiting tool, Summer Snow also provides professional development and networking opportunity for art faculty, current visual art students, and art alumni.

General Education Outcomes

1. A student who completes the GE curriculum can respond with informed sensitivity to an artistic work or experience. Summer Snow workshops are designed to expose participants to a variety of interesting artists, innovative processes, new materials, altered concepts, and unique philosophies in the visual arts. Each workshop will promote a renewed sensitivity and foster renewed insights into making, viewing, responding to works of art. With this newly honed sensibility, it then becomes each participant’s responsibility to filter this knowledge to improve current work and inform future work.

Student Learning Outcomes

1. Material Proficiency: Workshops expose participants to unique material possibilities depending on an instructor’s expertise.
2. Conceptual Principles: Each workshop is designed as a unique experience for participants according to each instructor’s course design and studio discipline. The principle of concept is distinct for each instructor’s philosophy and practice.
3. Historical Context: All studio art disciplines have a rich history of evolution, production, and contemporary application. Each visiting instructor will provide demonstrations of historical method, discuss historical relevance of process, and lecture on historic influences on their own work.
4. Critical Analysis: Students will practice the process of critical analysis as it applies to the specific discipline being taught in each workshop. This process takes place fluidly and frequently in a collective studio environment. Organized group critiques create a forum for formal analysis and is part of all workshops.
5. Process: Invited faculty are carefully selected knowing that each will provide unique insight into their creative process and studio practice.

Course Content

Content and rigor of each workshop will be determined by the instructor. Because of the broad spectrum of studio disciplines offered as workshops each year it is impossible to list specific content. These unique courses will contain instruction in technique, composition, theory, history, process, and studio practice. Instruction will include variations of the following generic pedagogies: demonstrations, slide lectures, and studio practice. Each week will also include a daily lecture series with participants from all classes in attendance.